Piece of me attempt #1

I am waiting for Zaia to go to deep sleep my tummy is rumbling and the artisan bread that I bought 2 days ago is beckoning me along with butter that is ready to be lathered unto the bread. Arg! I should have eaten rice and not just instant noddles.

Good the baby is sleeping I can finally toast the $4.50 bread that only I would eat. I had to mention the price, gad that was one hell of an expensive bread but I was curious as to how a real freshly baked (not store brand from grocery) bread would taste like. I love it but Yiek and Caleb couldn't care less, I shouldn't have gotten the honey whole wheat and went with plain white or rye bread knowing the they both are not crazy with the whole wheat variety.

Oh good, Zaia is sleeping I can finally make my 3rd cup of coffee -- 2nd cup of decaf coffee if I wanna be anal about it.

Glancing at the items discarded on the floor and looking at Caleb watching Backyardigans -- I should pick up these items on the floor Yiek is going to complain yet again about how a fantastic housewife I am for keeping the house clean with a smirk on his face.

There that should be enough, I have folded a basketful of laundry, picked up some items on the floor. Let me go back and enjoy my coffee, bread & butter, and ipad.

Why am I blogging? I should be organizing my coupons, it's triple coupons today if I go too late then ALL items will be gone. Hmmm..the man from Harris did say that they get delivery on Thursday and Sunday, maybe I should do it on Friday -- wait there is the consigment sale that I have to go to.. Oh well! Tomorrow then I'll organized tonight and then go tomorrow maybe with Caleb since he likes to push the cart so much but what about Zaia, the feisty baby girl hates the carrier now how am I suppose to keep tabs on two kids AND still coupon. I must go tomorrow, I don't have spaghetti noodles for friday night. We need to cook spag friday to bring to our beach trip Saturday. Such scattered thoughts.....ahhhh that is damn good butter and bread. Maybe I should splurge on LuRpak butter yes no yes no...

I still have dinner to prepare, now what should I have for dinner? If only the husband isn't so picky! Oh I'll have fish tinola! I had forgotten that I bought scrap salmon. This should be good for Zaia and me but my two boys, gaad why are they so picky? I eat everything and they don't why must they make my life so complicated aaahhh...

*** Note: an attempt to blog my day tnday activies, an experiment for me :) More to come in the next few days

Flawless Makeup

I am a very simple girl, I don't know much about make-ups and other kikay stuff. In fact my daily routine is just facial wash! I should remedy that and put on moisturizer night and day.

With 2 kids I am always in a rush so usually I either go out make-up free or do a quick foundation and lipstick while in the car. These past few months however I had a really bad allergic reaction to pollens and it left my face with white spots plus now that it's summer I am having an eczema breakout. Arrrgg! So, now I make an effort to apply make-up. I've been using bare minerals but I have to confess this make-up is more than 4 years old! I need to upgrade.

I saw this tutorial in youtube and it's been really helpful!

I figured I'm not getting older, heck it took me 5 minutes to figure out my real age when I was filling up a form yesterday. I had to calculate current year - my birth year, I could not believe I'm 32 now!

I have a lot of cheap make-up here so I need to invest in those high quality make-up now, as in now na.

1. Primer - shoot me I don't know about this product! A primer is used to make your make-up last all day, so that's why I've looking washed out after a few hours. I've been hearing good things about the MAC primer so I'll be heading this weekend to buy one bottle.
2. Concealer - I need a really, really good concealer to cover my white spots. I'm still researching so any recommendation is most welcome!
3. Foundation - I'm still confused on this one do I need liquid foundation or will a mineral foundation do?
4. Foundation Brush - I have a kabuki brush but it seems I need a better brush to a have apply the foundation more evenly like this MAC foundation brush 
5. Cheek Blusher - read that the best all around blusher is the NARS Orgasm Blush. What a name huh?
6. Bronzer - to look always glowing. I have mineral veil from Bare Minerals and bronzer from Stila, it should be good for now.
7. A good powder - might go with MAC as they do have good powders. I've let my Mom try their powder and she has never looked back.

Sheeessh, this will burn a hole in my packet, the NARS blush alone would set me back by $26 and primer by another $30. Yiikkees! oh my gulay.

I already have a concealer brush so that should take

Consignment Sales

I chanced upon a this blog when I was surfing around and I was hooked, she is in my neck of woods too! I wish I could go to yard sales but at this time it's hard with an infant who is still breastfeeding, maybe next year!

Well, she posted about a consignment sale and being the bargain hunter that I am got really excited about going there. I wasn't disappointed, aisles and aisles of girl's and boy's clothing and toys oh my! Apparently, consignment events are big here the reason I am loving my area more! I'm a bad mama, my little one had a little fever last Saturday but still we went and I got tons of clothes for $70. If I were to average the cost it would be less than $3 per item of uber cute clothes. I swear my head was spinning from browsing that I gave up after an hour.

Caleb got a Handy Manny toy for $6 (originally 40), a brand new crayola color explosion for $3 and a Fire Engine Freddie to the Rescue book. It's an old toy that sells for $30 at amazon (used one at that!). I should sell this book and make some money, no?

My loot baby included, lol.

There is another one happening this September and I'm stoked to be shopping there. Thinking of consigning some of my stuff to get an early pass. This is so addicting.

Travelling with an infant and toddler

My sister is getting married this December and I will be traveling alone with 2 kids. Say what? I think I have just gone crazy, you can't imagine how anxious I am on this dreaded trip. 25 hours of travel time ALONE with a 14 months old infant and almost 4 year old toddler. I might just go ahead and shoot myself. Yes, yes.. I should do that.

I've read up on a lot on this topic lately and well here are my plans for survival and a sort of checklist for me in the future.

For my toddler:

1. So what if I will get weird looks, I will put a backpack restraint on my toddler. I'd rather take the weird looks than take the chance of him getting lost in the crowd.
2. In connection with 2, I also have this distance alarm device that will beep when he is a certain distance away from me. Yes, I am making sure that he won't get lost in the crowd, one incident at the mall was enough lesson for me!
3. I bought a DSi XL for him last May so planning to buy him more games. I just hope he won't shout while playing as he does now when playing Dora "arriba! arriba!" .... yikes! Other passengers might not like it.
4. I am planning to buy an IPad just for the trip, my son can sit in a corner and tinker with the iphone for hours! Our Iphone was our survival device when we made a long car trip from NJ to Charlotte (11 hours trip) and NJ to Raleigh (9 hours trip). I'm thinking that he'll love the IPad more than the Iphone since it's bigger. The night before the trip I will load up new Ben10 and Pokemon episodes plus a couple of new games and IBooks for him, that should keep him busy for a few hours. Yes? Okay okay there is another reason I'm buying this, simply because I like having this waste-of-money gadget, I have the apple ipad envy.
5. Toys and lots of toys to bring in the plane when the ipad can't be used (during take-off and landing) and when he's bored silly with the device. I bought this really cool magnet toy from World Market. It's a playhouse that you can stick table, chairs and other stuff to create a scene. It's similar to the pic below but imagine a house with 3 floors.
 
5. Coloring books, puzzles, stickers and mini story books. Not only is it educational, he will have fun with it too. 




For my infant:
1. I am planning to buy an Ergo baby carrier so I can have my hands free with taking care of my active toddler. Zaia likes being close to me than being put in the stroller anyway.
2. Request a bassinet even if she does not fit I'll have extra legroom and a place for her to play. If I can't have the bassinet I'm planning to buy the FlyeBaby, it will save me from having her on my lap all the time.


3.I'll be bringing her extra baby food and lots of snacks just in case the airline will not have something for her.
4. Breastfeed her as often as she likes, so what if my breasts will go sore and I will be parching as long as she doesn't wail a lot it'll save me from sanity.
5. New toys that I'm planning to gift wrap they said they'll have more fun unwrapping the presents. Planning to use those shiny and shimmery wrappers.

For both:
1. Double stroller.
2. Extra clothes for the 3 of us.
3. Pain medicines such as Benadryl, Tylenol and Motrin. Chamomile and other natural medicine to help her relax.
4. Two kinds of thermometers: rectal and IR thermometer.

How o how am I going to bring all these things in one bag! I still have a lot of questions but I have to save it in a another post. Do comment if you have more suggestions :)

Caleb Speaks #4

Overheard while I was driving.

Caleb: Mommy, Zaia is eating bread!!!
(Scare shitless that she might choke )
Mommy: Caleb, take the bread out from Zaia. Get it! Get it!

Caleb: I can't Mommy it's in Zaia's tummy.

*bitaw pud unsaon man hehehe

Life so far...

So it's been 6 weeks since we moved here, how have we liked it? We liked it a lot! Although we do miss our friends back in NJ and the glorious food there i.e. Ramen from Mitsuwa and endless choices of filipino food. We find life here relaxing worlds away from the rat race in NJ, we actually have some semblance of *gasp* family life. Although we do wake up earlier we found out that it isn't that bad at all, it's amazing how you get a lot of mileage when you do that. People here just wake up earlier, garage sale at 7:00 AM, imagine that, I don't think I have it in me to wake up that early unless I have someone to shop with. Our apartment's parking lot is deserted by 9:00 AM.

Yiek goes home 2 hours earlier than in NJ so we now have time to go swimming at our complex's pool which is conveniently a few feet away from our unit, time to go to the library to borrow books, biking for Caleb, a walk to and from the playground and time for me to do a little bit of grocery shopping and deal hopping.

Parks are a-plenty here so we visit one or two every week to stroll and let Caleb play in the playground. It is really a family oriented place and that's exactly what we were looking for.

I am still adjusting though to making food from scratch, dinuguan for one (something I tried and failed miserably) and other pinoy food, I can't find here. I did find one but what weird hours, open only on weekdays from 9-4 PM and every 3rd Saturday of the month. I guess we have to wait for July then to try the resto. Not to worry though, one will open this august so it's something we are looking forward to.

Photography

Hubby has been busy building up his site. One of the reason he wants to move here is to have more time with his hobby which is photography, our kids have thousands of photos that I'm literally getting cross eyed just looking at them. He is willing to shoot for free just to add new faces to his profile. So if you are near our area, shoot him or me an email.

 

Our bugoy aka crazy kid, Caleb.

 

My little dolly, Zaia.

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